Local home care providers help create screening tool for deadly disease

Amy Neff Roth

Saturday

Sep 24, 2016 at 7:26 AM

Local home care providers — and soon providers across the state — are working to save lives by fighting a stealthy killer.

That killer is sepsis, an often lethal reaction to infection that can cause organ failure, septic shock and a sudden drop in blood pressure. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently raised alarms about this medical emergency.

“It’s just a really under-recognized, misunderstood condition,” said Amy Bowerman, director of quality improvement and privacy officer for the Mohawk Valley Health System’s home care services and director of patient services for Senior Network Health. “Everyone knows when you say heart attack or you say stroke, everyone knows what those signs and symptoms are. But when you say sepsis, even in a room full of very educated, seasoned clinicians, you’ll find there are many variables and opinions as to what the critical symptoms are for sepsis.”

Having worked with sepsis in the hospital in the past, Bowerman wondered what was being done about it in home care when she changed jobs a few years ago. “Nobody seemed to have any real answers for me,” she recalled.

Yet 80 percent of cases begin outside the hospital, Bowerman said. So she started talking about it and ended up as lead clinician on a Home Care Association of New York State project to create the nation’s first community-based screening tool so that home care providers can screen their patients for infection and the onset of sepsis, which requires treatment as quickly as possible.

A pilot screening program already is in place in the Albany and Syracuse regions, including Utica, and a webinar on Friday, Sept. 30 will train home care providers across the state in how to screen their patients.

Only two states — New York and Illinois — even mandate screening in hospitals, let alone home care, said Roger Noyes, director of communications for the Home Care Association.

“We see this as a first foray to examine some kind of proactive strategy from the home care industry,” he said.

In New York, the number of sepsis cases rose 68 percent from 2005 to 2011, according to the Home Care Association. It’s the most expensive condition nationwide and the leading cause of hospital re-admissions in New York, according to the association.

It’s not clear how many cases begin with patients in home care, but almost certainly enough for better home care screening to make a difference — especially if it leads to faster treatment, Noyes said. Keeping people out of the hospital or preventing them from having to go back is the “core competency” of home care, he said.

“We really see this as a major opportunity area to assist with what we’re seeing as a serious health crisis,” he said.

Follow @OD_Roth on Twitter or call her at 792-5166.

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